Chương 86: The Master Assassin

It took almost four hours for Ortiz to forge a shield out of the carcass of the Goliath Horn-Beetle. It was similar to the one Maan was currently using, a rectangular door-shaped shield. Just by looking at the shield, it gave a solid, formidable sensation. It would definitely help against Victor and his lackeys. Looking up at the sky, the timer's countdown continued; as per his guess, it would complete around 6 in the morning.

Now, it was almost 10 PM, and the skeletons that went to collect materials had yet to return. His current thoughts focused on how he was going to approach this attack, what the possible outcomes of this revenge attack were, and whether his strength was enough. He currently held two Expert, one Intermediate, and five Beginner combat skeletons. If he were to hire a Master Debuffer, it would add significant strength to his attack party.

If he remembered correctly, Victor's party consisted of a total of seven members, including Victor himself. Among them, three members were [Theta] standard Core Layer Awakeners. It was definitely not enough. Even if the Techi skeleton could use its abilities to reduce these people's strength down by one Core Layer, Arthur still had to deal with a total of seven [Delta] standard Awakeners, which was equivalent to the strength of seven Expert status skeleton members.

However, he currently only had two Expert combat skeletons. With support from Maan, they could fend off three people, but the Beginner status skeletons would definitely be cannon fodder since they severely lacked strength. Arthur lacked four Expert skeletons to defeat those people and free everyone. With at least three more Expert skeletons added to his current strength, he could definitely take his revenge on Victor no matter what.

He had searched extensively; however, there were no Expert Skeletons that could be hired using the materials available here. Beginner Combat Skeletons were available, but it was a waste of time. They would not help him much in front of the sheer strength of those people. He could hire a few Intermediate Skeletons and use them as support in the battle.

[Worker Status] Name: Eden Designation: Warhammer Knight Specialist: Warhammer Professional Status: Intermediate Monthly Maintenance Cost (MMC): 4, 000 Credits Contract Payment: 500 Alpha Standard Cores, 100 Elemental Resistant Scales (any). — [Worker Status] Name: Straw Designation: Elementalist Specialist: Energy Shield Professional Status: Intermediate Monthly Maintenance Cost (MMC): 6, 000 Credits Contract Payment: 500 Alpha Standard Cores, 100 liters of Blood (Lightning).

— [Worker Status] Name: Lambert Designation: Spearman Specialist: Lance Professional Status: Intermediate Monthly Maintenance Cost (MMC): 5, 000 Credits Contract Payment: 500 Alpha Standard Cores, 250 Femur bones. These three Intermediate Skeletons were the ones he could hire here. Even then, he had to wait for Coburn's party to return to check whether they had collected the secondary materials. Upon successfully hiring the skeletons, he would march to the underground Safe Spot at the right time.

He would launch a sneak attack to quickly kill a few members. That would place their side in chaos and at a disadvantage. With the other people alongside him, they would eventually be cornered and killed before whatever this timer did to them. Arthur sat down as he started to go through the things that had happened over the last two days in this trial. Some strange things had happened to him; he had even died once and come back to life. That was an unreal phenomenon if one were to ask.

Just thinking about what would have happened if he had died and not come back alive made his heart contract. His family would have definitely suffered for life financially and mentally. Arthur thought about his new friends, their struggle, and how those bastards had killed him for no reason. Maybe he should have kept his presence low instead of acting as if he were the savior and trying to speak up. Was that the reason he was killed? That kill still did not make any sense.

He had, of course, acted as a leader, asking people to gather all the details about the trials. But that did not warrant a threat to anyone or anything. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Then, what could be the reason? Just thinking about the incident of his murder that had happened without any warning, he recalled the relaxed faces of those people. That relaxedness was still nagging at the corner of his mind.

What could be the reason for their calmness? Suddenly, he remembered what Daniel had told him while they were going for a hunt.

'At first, only three people came to the trial: Victor and the other two. Then, a day or two later, four more people arrived; they were strong Awakeners with four Core layers. Although Daniel speculated that Arthur and his team could be the final participants of the trial, he did not concretely state that. This meant more people could have already arrived, perhaps strong people.' Thinking about it now, Nickolas and Susanne were from prominent families.

Since Victor's family had sent strong people to rescue him, there was a chance these people's families had also sent people, and they had already arrived at the Safe Spot. However, the question was how many people had arrived up until now. Was that the reason why Victor and his lackeys were so confident? They believed their families would eventually send people, or his own family members would arrive to rescue him. That had made him arrogant and given him the courage to kill him.

Arthur's mind spun violently after thinking about all these possibilities. If what he had just thought was true, more powerful people had already arrived at the Safe Spot. Was that the reason why the timer appeared in the sky? It indicated the trial would begin since the conditions had been met to start the trial. If that were true, was the plan to attack Victor wise? Suddenly, hesitation arose in his heart, added with dread. He was pretty sure more people had definitely arrived in these last two days.

If his team was the last one to arrive, then why had nothing happened over these last two days, like this countdown in the sky? Thus, more people had arrived during these two days, and now some kind of conditions were met on the trial, moving it to the next stage.

"Ahhhh!" Arthur scratched his head frantically. These speculations made everything he had done so far go down the drain. Even though he had grown strong personally, and his skeletons had also grown, the question was: is this enough to take revenge on Victor? What if he were to storm into the Underground Safe Spot and get caught again? His presence would definitely create a big surprise for everyone. And if strong people had arrived in the last two days on Victor's side, he would be doomed to die again.

What should I do? Immediately, Arthur opened the Nether-Realm Marketplace. He needed to find someone who could help assess the situation at the Underground Safe Spot. Currently, he abandoned the idea of killing Victor. All things led to one clear point: there were more people at that Underground Safe Spot than when he had died. Attacking him without knowing what the conditions were would put him in a dangerous spot. Another matter he had to consider beforehand was what would happen once the timer came to an end.

Would the trial place everyone in the same spot? If so, he would be doomed. Just imagining suddenly appearing in the midst of everyone if the trial placed them in a single location was dreadful. Therefore, before that happened, he needed to observe the conditions at the Safe Spot. To achieve this, he needed to hire a skeleton that possessed the capability to hide its presence and assess the situation without alerting those people. What he needed was a skeleton possessing great Stealth abilities.

Arthur browsed through numerous skeleton professions such as Scout, Ranger, Thief, Rogue, Assassin, and Ninja. These professions possessed the highest Stealth characteristics, which he needed to gather data without anyone noticing. Eventually, he found one skeleton that would be perfect for this job.

[Worker Status] Name: Hall Designation: Assassin Specialist: Infiltration Professional Status: Master Monthly Maintenance Cost (MMC): 35, 000 Credits Contract Payment: 1, 000 [Theta] Standard Corpses, or 5, 000 [Delta] Standard Corpses, or 7, 500 [Gamma] Standard Corpses, or 10, 000 [Alpha] Standard Corpses. Arthur had explicitly excluded other Professional Statuses and dug solely through the Master Status. Hall the Assassin Skeleton would be perfect for this job.

However, the only lamentable point was the enormous Contract Payment. 10, 000 [Alpha] Standard Corpses! Compared to this skeleton, Techi the Debuffer was gold, since it only required 2, 500 Cores and Hearts. This was a massive Contract Payment. Arthur currently hesitated on whether to commit to this, as only 8 hours remained. However, in the next second, Arthur decided to do it. He needed to do this in order to know what was happening at the Safe Spot.

This would definitely help him regardless of what occurred after the countdown ended. If he blindly waited for the time to finish and ended up in a difficult situation, he would regret not taking this action. While he was pondering the future, he suddenly heard a noise from behind. Turning around, Arthur saw that the skeletons had returned from hunting. They must have gathered enough materials to hire the Techi skeleton, but now the plan had changed.

He stood up and looked at Ortiz, who was about to finish forging the shield.

"Everyone, let us work at double the speed from here on out. Borg, lead us to the Underground Safe Spot," Arthur commanded.